When The Times opts for CD's rather than CDs, it's considered house
style. But if a shopkeeper mislays an apostrophe, the kind of people
who worry about whether anal-retentive has a hyphen are quick to
criticize.

I'm one of those kind of people and I'm also quick to criticize the Grey Lady's
"house style". CD's and
DVD's are bad enough, but how about the
typographic nightmare of G.I.'s and
C.E.O.'s? Talk about punctuation
proliferation! On the same Op-Ed page as the above article they get
it wrong, writing C.E.O's. Inconsistencies
left and right, who can keep these
rules straight anyway?

I can. The apostrophe rule is simple. An apostrophe never marks a
plural.
The rule about
CEO vs.
C.E.O. is less clear. The NYT
style guide probably has a list of where you don't use dots. I think
it's better to never use dots at all.